1. Technical Field
The present disclosure relates to suction grippers. More particularly, the present disclosure relates to a system, method, and apparatus for suction gripping using a passively actuated valve to control the suction.
2. Description of Related Art
Suction grippers (also referred to as “vacuum grippers”) can be secured to workpieces for handling. Manipulators attached to the suction gripper, such as robot arms or industrial machine manipulators, can then transport the workpiece. Different workpieces (also referred to as “objects”) require different corresponding suction grippers. The suction grippers are usually adapted to the size and weight of the workpiece to be manipulated. Suction grippers may include a continuous sealing lip to close a vacuum chamber (i.e., inner cavity) by fluidly sealing it with respect to the surroundings air/or or surrounding fluid. This enables relatively simple gripping and transport of various workpieces, such as metal sheets or glass plates.
Nature used suction technology for grasping and manipulating workpieces long before humans realized its technological potential. Octopuses, squid, and other cephalopods use tentacles with suction cups to grasp and manipulate food into their mouths. Biological examples of functionality such as these and others have provided the inspiration for numerous robotic techniques, including tentacle arms and suction cups, and may continue to do so in the foreseeable future.
A wide variety of robotic and automated tasks uses suction technology. For example, an application of suction technology has been robotic locomotion. Numerous wall-climbing robots use suction to grasp walls. Applications for wall climbing include surveillance, cleaning, and inspection of confined spaces such as those of an aircraft. Suction grippers have also been used for grasping and manipulation of workpieces in industrial settings. However, some prior art suction grippers are specific to particular types of workpiece, and have workpiece size and geometry constraints. For example, some prior art suction grippers for workpiece manipulation are designed to grasp flat, featureless panels, while other prior art grippers are designed for moving limp sheets, harvesting fruit, and/or holding documents. Although suction grippers are useful in a wide range of applications, some prior art suction grippers arc designed for one specific workpiece size and geometry. The ability to utilize suction grippers on a single grasper for manipulating workpieces with widely varying shapes and sizes expands a robot's workpiece manipulation capability.